{"id":6306,"date":"2013-08-06T10:16:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T17:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6306"},"modified":"2013-08-06T10:16:43","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T17:16:43","slug":"epitaph-for-a-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/epitaph-for-a-foreign-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Epitaph for a Foreign Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

If you still doubt that Barack Obama has disastrously bungled our foreign policy, check out this\u00a0video<\/a>. In it Egyptian singer Salma Elmasry brutally insults Obama for supporting the Muslim Brothers and Islamists in general, her vulgar insults laced with an image of our President sporting a bin Laden cap and beard, and another of him with thickened nose and lips, no surprise to anyone familiar with traditional Arab racism. Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin is on his way to Cairo. According to\u00a0Debka<\/a>, \u201cPutin hopes to come away from Cairo as champion of the war on radical Islam in two important Arab countries and the most reliable ally of forces for moderation.\u201d Next on his itinerary is Tehran, where \u201cthe Russian leader will use the double exposure to underscore Moscow\u2019s solid presence at the power centers of the Middle East \u2013 in striking contrast to Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things are pretty bad internationally when Putin, the butcher of Muslim Cechnyans, is seen as a \u201cmoderate,\u201d and the enabler of genocidal Iran and Syria a stauncher warrior against jihadist terror than the land of the free that lost 3000 citizens and billions of dollars on 9\/11. That\u2019s how badly Obama has damaged our interests and security, squandered the capital of our international prestige, and in general made everything worse.<\/p>\n

How far this debacle is from the foreign policy \u201chope and change\u201d rhetoric when he took office in 2009. Like the Dems and their flacks in the media, Obama had exploited the false narrative that the trigger-happy \u201ccowboy\u201d George Bush had scorned diplomacy and alienated our allies. Typical is this editorial from the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/i>\u00a0in January 2009: \u201cThe Bush administration\u2019s hubris and relentless disregard for our allies abroad shredded the fabric of multilateralism . . . The Bush years, defined by ultimatums and unilateral actions around the world, must be brought to a swift close with a renewed emphasis on diplomacy, consultation and the forging abroad of broad international coalitions.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Barack Obama was their man. In 2007 he had pledged to \u201creinvigorate American diplomacy\u201d\u00a0and \u201crebuild the alliances, partnerships, and institutions necessary to confront common threats and enhance common security.\u201d His first years in office he told the U.N. that he would \u201cembrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interests and mutual respect.\u201d He followed through on these pledges, \u201creaching out\u201d to our rivals and enemies. He bowed to the Saudi king Abdullah, and in Cairo he flattered Islam and apologized for America\u2019s sins while Muslim Brotherhood officials sat beaming in the front row.<\/p>\n

He pushed the \u201creset button\u201d\u00a0with Russia and \u201cbent over backwards,\u201d\u00a0as he put it, extending the hand of friendship to Iran. As the mullahs spun their centrifuges and their henchmen slaughtered our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, he told them, \u201cWe are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.\u201d He begged the Ayatollah Khamenei for \u201cco-operation in regional and bilateral relations,\u201d and even after being contemptuously rebuffed, said, \u201cWe remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran.\u201d And don\u2019t forget, he helped the Europeans bring down a freshly denuclearized Gaddafi in Libya, turning that country into international jihadism\u2019s favorite arms bazaar, ushered Mubarak out the door in Egypt and ushered the Muslim Brotherhood in, got our ambassador and three other brave Americans murdered in Benghazi, and routinely insulted and berated Israel.<\/p>\n

And what does he have to show for this diplomatic outreach, flattery, wheedling, and cringing? An insulting video from the people he claimed to help liberate; only 24% of people in Muslim countries possessing confidence in him personally and 15% approving of his policies, according to\u00a0Pew<\/a>; and Russia now the dominant power in the region, adding insult to the injury of granting asylum to national-security leaker Edward Snowden. As for al Qaeda, which Obama assured us was \u201con its heels,\u201d it remains an expanding threat potent enough to compel the closure of 19 U.S. embassies in Muslim countries until Saturday. Everywhere America is viewed with contempt, her prestige in tatters, her deterrent power nil.<\/p>\n

All that should be obvious, but the larger lesson is that the two-centuries-long dream of internationalist idealism has been once again exposed as a dangerous illusion. The whole international order has moved from being useless for American security and interests, to malignant and dangerous. NATO, the best of the bunch, is nothing but an American-financed fig leaf for Europe\u2019s unwillingness to spend the money necessary to back up its pretentions to being a global power rather than a glorified Switzerland or Luxembourg, all the while knowing that the U.S will do the dirty work needed to keep the global economy moving.<\/p>\n

We recently had a graphic example of Europe\u2019s weakness when France sent troops into Mali to drive out the jihadists ravaging that country. In\u00a0The American Spectator<\/i>, Joseph Harriss\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0of the French intervention, \u201cFrench troops debarking in Mali desperately needed much more support than [the handful of aircraft from England and Belgium], but France simply did not have enough military transport aircraft to ferry in promised reinforcements, including those from African nations like Chad and Togo. Nor did it have the aerial refueling capacity to allow its Mirage F-1 jets to make planned bombing runs against insurgent convoys and cells. And when it came to that weapon of choice for today\u2019s proliferating asymmetrical wars, the drone, it had virtually nothing.\u201d (In fact, Harriss points out, the French have three out-of-date surveillance drones, compared to America\u2019s 6000 of all types.) In the end, American aerial refueling and transport and cargo aircraft made the French mission succeed. Given that pathetic lack of mat\u00e9riel and troops, how could European nations ever back up its NATO obligation to come to our aid if attacked, or contribute meaningfully to support for our common foreign policy interests\u2013\u2013like keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons\u2013\u2013 without us doing all the heavy lifting?<\/p>\n

And NATO is a roaring success compared to the U.N., or the E.U., or the various international \u201ccourts of justice\u201d\u00a0 and \u201chuman rights\u201d that supposedly punish international malefactors and uphold the rule of law. As the Spanish proverb has it, these bloated bureaucracies are like spider webs that catch flies but let the hawks fly through. They nab the stray Serbian butcher while the murderers of millions walk around free and sit on human rights commissions. And the reason has been obvious ever since the hapless League of Nations crashed and burned. They are all political entities that member states use to pursue their national interests. Just look at the despicable hounding of Israel on the part of all these institutions, most recently in the E.U.\u2019s support in the U.N. of the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition in violation of the Oslo Accords, the cut-off of grants to entities in the so-called West Bank, and the continuing divestment movement going strong in Europe with governmental support. Anti-Semitism and mindless left-wing faddishness partly account for this outrage, but so does the calculation of European countries that angering tiny Israel is a safer bet than riling up Muslim countries and Europe\u2019s own disgruntled Muslim immigrants.<\/p>\n

The bankrupt internationalism that has elevated diplomacy into a fetish does not serve American interests or security. As a card-carrying member of the academic left, Obama came into office with all the unthinking, ancient prejudices of that tribe: a dislike of military power, a distaste for their own country, a sentimental third-worldism that makes our enemies victims of \u201cimperialism\u201d\u00a0deserving of our guilt and cash, a commitment to ideology and power that trumps the obligation to defend our security and tend to our interests, and a preference for lofty talk rather than grim action. This vulgar, raucous Egyptian video should serve as the epitaph of those bankrupt notions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine If you still doubt that Barack Obama has disastrously bungled our foreign policy, check out this\u00a0video. In it Egyptian singer Salma Elmasry brutally insults Obama for supporting the Muslim Brothers and Islamists in general, her vulgar insults laced with an image of our President sporting a bin Laden cap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,196],"tags":[12,1035,74,1043,1065,1047,1056,1037,424],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1DI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6473,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fifteen-minutes-of-foreign-policy-malfeasance\/","url_meta":{"origin":6306,"position":0},"title":"Fifteen Minutes of Foreign Policy Malfeasance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 On the eve of the 12thanniversary of the terrorist strikes on 9\/11, President Obama last night addressed the nation and reprised every delusional and bankrupt internationalist idea that contributed to that disaster. The current Syrian crisis\u2013\u2013merely the latest Middle Eastern example of Obama\u2019s incompetence\u2013\u2013exemplifies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":967,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-muslim-brothers-get-paid-to-threaten-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":6306,"position":1},"title":"The Muslim Brothers Get Paid to Threaten America","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Remember last year\u2019s giddy bipartisan enthusiasm over the \u201cArab Spring\u201d? President Obama claimed that Egyptians merely wanted \u201ca government that is fair and just and responsive,\u201d Senator John McCain asserted that Libyans were aiming for \u201clasting peace, dignity, and justice,\u201d while Senator Joseph Lieberman\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6318,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putinology\/","url_meta":{"origin":6306,"position":2},"title":"Putinology","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner Barack Obama\u2019s cancellation of his Russian visit is the normal sort of diplomat payback for insult and injury \u2014 in this case the asylum offered Edward Snowden in the face of administration pleas to send him home for punishment. 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Thornton FrontPage Magazine Ten years after 9\/11 many politicians and pundits continue to misinterpret Islamic jihadism. Typical is the following comment from Senator Joseph Lieberman\u2019s\u00a0essay\u00a0in\u00a0Foreign Affairs, in which he speaks of \u201can ideological struggle within Islam, waged between an extremist minority that seeks to enslave the world\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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